WASHINGTON, Dec 23 (Reuters) - A document making a crude reference to Donald Trump — purportedly written by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to Larry Nassar, who is serving a life sentence for abusing hundreds of girls — is fake, the U.S. Department of Justice said on Tuesday, hours after releasing it to the public.
"This fake letter serves as a reminder that just because a document is released by the Department of Justice does not make the allegations or claims within the document factual. Nevertheless, the DOJ will continue to release all material required by law," the department said in a statement.
Last month, Congress passed — and Trump signed — a law requiring the Justice Department to make its Epstein files public. The large batch of documents released on Monday follows disclosures late last week, with more expected.
The agency said the FBI concluded that the writing does not appear to match Epstein's and that it was postmarked three days after Epstein's death out of Northern Virginia. Epstein at the time of his death was incarcerated in a New York jail. It also did not include his inmate number as required for outgoing mail.
The card features an image of a couple holding hands across a table and says in a handwritten note that "our president also shares our love of young, nubile girls." It was part of some 30,000 pages of documents released to the public on Tuesday.
There have been no allegations in the Justice Department disclosures of Epstein's files that Trump committed any crime.
The supposed Epstein card also includes the message: "As you know by now, I have taken the 'short route' home," a possible allusion to suicide. Epstein was found dead in his cell on August 10, 2019. The Justice Department has said that he killed himself.
One of Nassar's former lawyers, Shannon Smith, declined to comment. Another former lawyer, Matthew Newburg, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The government obtained the handwritten card when it was returned to the federal detention center in New York as undeliverable after Epstein, an American financier with connections to prominent figures, had died in what authorities ruled a suicide.
The Associated Press reported in 2023 that a card had been returned to the New York jail addressed from Epstein to Nassar. It was found in the jail's mail room after Epstein died. It was unclear if the two men had any previous relationship.
Nassar, who served as Olympic gymnasts’ team doctor for 18 years, was sentenced in 2017 to 60 years in federal prison for possessing child sex abuse material, and in 2018 received two Michigan sentences totaling up to 300 years for molesting gymnasts under his care.
(Reporting by Brad Heath; Additional reporting by Richard Cowan and Andrew Goudsward; Editing by Craig Timberg and Howard Goller)
